EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 GUNS

Once again, we must face our feelings toward guns. Here are mine. They are mine alone. I'm not asking anyone to agree. I just feel compelled.

I don't think gun control is THE answer. Oh, I don't think any reasonable person would agree that a troubled teenager or, for that matter, anyone not employed full-time by one of the armed forces branches, should not have access to an assault rifle. But those are common sense precautions, not solutions.

No, I don't think control is the answer. I think shame would prove more effective. As a youth, I suffered punishment, often severe punishment, from a father who inherited a Teutonic and evangelistic belief in beating children to instill compliance to arbitrary standards of conduct. It was only partially effective for I tended to repeat the assault-driven transgressions again and again. A therapist friend once suggested that it was part of the "toughening-up process" of tribal admittance.

Anyway, it proved only partially effective, sometimes.

On the other side of the marriage aisle, the fear of shame-control utilized by my Sainted Mother was effective and everlasting.

"To what degree?" you ask.

Well, once, after a long morning of contemplation sitting at the edge of the Great Tide Pool near Monterey, California, I made the decision to participate in an unholy and unjustified war, putting my life for risk not for love of country but for fear of the shame that would wash over me like the waves washing over the rocks before me.

Shame is a powerful force, so …

If you think the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America is there simply to help you obtain an erection, shame on you.

Everlasting shame on you.